


You alone

by captainhurricane



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: Gen, ending spoilers, seriously don't read if you don't know the ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2694188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>-and the gunslinger followed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You alone

**Author's Note:**

> Because no book series will break my heart worse than the Dark Tower has. Yet there is hope. There is, after all, always hope. Go forth, gunslinger.

you alone know how the sand cracks and crinkles under your boots until it makes no sound at all. until no sound is in the world but the whisper of the dry, hot wind and your own breathing in your ears.

(the man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed-)

you alone know the weight of your years on your shoulders, how each loss had carved itself on your face and on your soul. somewhere cuthbert throws one last joke and alain pats your shoulder. companions, friends. your enemies live. your lovers and friends don’t. (you have shed susan from your mind yet you can’t shed her from your soul because in part she was your soul.) 

you alone know how the doors appear out of nothingness. how the boy falls. how his words resonate with you until you meet him again. you alone know why the world has moved on. 

you and you alone.

(the man in black fled across the desert and-)

the desert shifts into mountains and the mountains shift into beaches. salt stings your eyes, long ago accustomed to nothing but the lonely trek ahead of you. the loss of some of your fingers are nothing compared to the ruins that still burn at the back of your mind and the burn that the dark tall shape ahead of you places inside you. it’s nothing. 

not all of your steps you have to take alone. eddie is much like cuthbert, you find, not so much physically but eddie lives with the same ferocity that cuthbert did and you hope eddie won’t find the same end as cuthbert did. you know it in your heart that he will, oh, he will. susannah is like no one else, a woman with her soul split in two, loving, fearsome, the loss of legs making her no less of a gunslinger than she already is when you pull her into your world. jake, oh, jake. child in all but his soul. in another life perhaps you could have cherished him better, kept him safe and had him as your own son. you love them the best you can but they are only a road to the pitch-blackness of the Tower. 

you alone know the holes they are carving into you even as they hold your hand and walk with you every step of the way. 

right until they don’t. you were right. eddie did find the same end as cuthbert. jake took himself to the clearing at the end of the path once more and perhaps this time for good. (you don’t really cry. not anymore. all your tears were shed even before the jericho hill and the last cry of the horn of eld). susannah departs and shares no last glance with you. 

they do not see the awful truth of the dark tower at the heart of every world that ever was and ever will be. 

(the man in black fled across the -)

(the man in black-)

you alone know how the sand cracks and crinkles under your boots until it makes no sound at all. until no sound is in the world but the whisper of the dry, hot wind and your own breathing in your ears. the horn of eld is tied to your waist, your fingers brush it and recognize the stains on it as dried up blood. yet your heart remains hopeful. 

go on, gunslinger, whispers the wind. once more. once more.


End file.
